[ RadSafe ] More radioactive debris turning up in garbage

[Gerald Nicholls]

Life can get very complicated, and expensive, very quickly when dealing
with rad materials in trash.   

John Jacobus wrote, very reasonably: 

That is the problem.  We have regulations that require
every actions to be taken when there are no real
risks.  Who do you know that eats trash.  Is the
transfer to ground water more hazardous than the other
stuff that is buried with it?  Why not let it decay in
the landfill as opposed to having it sit in the truck.

This was in response to Marty Bourquin who reported the typical
response to a radioactive material being detected at a landfill:

> The issue really isnt whether or not the waste is
> exempted.  If it sets 
> off the montiors at the landfill it will not be
> accepted by the landfill 
> operator. Once that alarm goes off most facilities
> want nothing to do 
> with it.  They will typically just call in someone
> (regulator) to take 
> care of the problem - often by making the truck sit
> till it decays.

But, consider the following.  A garbage truck from New Jersey sets off
the monitors at a Pennsylvania landfill.  A gamma spec unit with a
pre-programmed library of nuclides says that the material is U-235 or
Pu-239.  Pennsylvania decides (corrrectly) that the material has been
misidentified but, since they don't accept radioactive material at their
landfills, sends the truck back to New Jersey.  

In New Jersey, at the transfer station where the load originated,
another gamma spec unit says that the material is Pu-239.  Without
getting into numbers, let's just say that there are a lot of folks (and
agencies) that are very interested in this incident now.  The load is
dumped to find the offending material.  The contaminated material
includes a piece of paper with handwritten notes identifying the
material and its orgin: Lu-177 from a New York hospital.  

Yes, the hospital should have had better controls.  But, even good
facilities (and this one is good one) make a mistake now and then.  Yes,
it should have been possible to correctly identify the material with
better (that is, more expensive and complex) instrumentation.  But, how
much should a landfill have to spend on such instrumentation and what
level of health physicist is it practical for them to employ? 

In response to the threat of terrorism and zealous regard for the
environment, even to the point of impracticality, we've put a lot of
monitors out there.  And, as one of my colleagues used to say many years
ago, "You put monitors out there and you find stuff."

Gerry









Gerald P. Nicholls
NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection
609-633-7964
gerald.nicholl at dep.state.nj.us